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A comment on The DAO close to $100m in funding. Soon to be the largest crowdfunding ever.

Re:The DAO close to $100m in funding. Soon to be the largest... by natch on Sunday May 15, 2016 @02:27PM (#11702077)
This is just bonkers:

>By Creating DAO tokens through interaction with The DAO’s smart contract code, you expressly agree to all of the terms and conditions set forth in that code. If you do not understand or do not agree to those terms, you should not Create DAO tokens.

They are saying you need to fully understand all the code, in order to responsibly decide whether you should click a button. But the code is off somewhere else, with no links to it in the shrink-wrap license. For all I know some of the code is buggy or impossible to understand. How many people putting in money have read all the code before doing so? Does all the code even exist yet? Are they agreeing to contracts now that will be hammered out in the future, by a democracy? Tyranny of the majority, anyone? Tyranny of the majority enforced by code sounds even more scary.

Then:

>The use of The DAO’s smart contract code and the Creation of DAO tokens carries significant financial risk, including using experimental software.

The risk part I get, that's pretty standard. But I'm to agree to abide by contracts set out in code I can't see, probably can't understand, and running in experimental software?

What could possibly go wrong?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The DAO close to $100m in funding. Soon to be the largest... by pdaian on Sunday May 15, 2016 @07:24PM (#11703258)
The code is here: https://github.com/slockit/DAO/blob/master/DAO.sol

Also pretty much entirely contained in the whitepaper.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The DAO close to $100m in funding. Soon to be the largest... by natch on Thursday May 19, 2016 @01:17AM (#11728162)
The fact that you can post a github link here tells me nothing. And that code is atrocious, but that isn't even the point. The point is there's no way people are vetting this code that they are signing up to be bound by. It's utterly insane to hand money over to this thing.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The DAO close to $100m in funding. Soon to be the largest... by jaredtobin on Sunday May 15, 2016 @11:36PM (#11704077)
The code that defines the contract is publicly viewable on the blockchain. [1]

[1]: https://etherscan.io/address/0xbb9bc244d798123fde783fcc1c72d...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The DAO close to $100m in funding. Soon to be the largest... by natch on Thursday May 19, 2016 @01:18AM (#11728166)
How does that help, when the code is super shitty but people are still signing up?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The DAO close to $100m in funding. Soon to be the largest... by DennisP on Sunday May 15, 2016 @08:47PM (#11703557)
It's basically legalese that says you agree with what's inevitable on the platform anyway. The code governs what happens, and there's no recourse if you don't like it. Every full node on Ethereum makes sure that the code runs the way it's written to run.

My understanding is that this code is written, deployed, and verified by third parties. The ecosystem has tools to let people check sourcecode against deployed contracts.

[ Parent | on HN ]